THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411190348
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 228 lines
Thomas Crudup is the consummate union man. He's been a union activist most of his career, and now he's leading the state's biggest union into contract talks crucial not only to members, but also to the company that employs them and the economy of Hampton Roads.
Crudup is president of Local 8888 of the United Steelworkers of America, which represents thousands of blue-collar workers at Newport News Shipbuilding. The union's latest contract expires in February, and negotiations started last week for a new one.
Crudup talks the talk of a man dealing from a position of strength. He wants better wages and benefits for the yard's laborers.
``We're not going into negotiations with the idea of any concessions regardless of what they may be, where they may be, how they dress it up or how they may sugarcoat it,'' he said.
But concessions are just what the shipyard wants, and despite Crudup's bluster, it appears to hold the stronger hand.
Faced with fewer orders from the Navy, its sole customer of the past 15 years, Newport News Shipbuilding laid off thousands of employees in recent years. It's expected to argue that without concessions from the union, more job losses are likely.
To survive Navy cutbacks, the yard plans to diversify into commercial shipbuilding. If the plan is to succeed, the yard must become internationally competitive to go head on against shipyards around the world, including the heavily subsidized European yards and low-wage South Korean yards. To compete, Newport News Shipbuilding officials say, it has to keep costs down, including its biggest cost - labor.
While the yard's short-term outlook is good, thanks to congressional approval of a contract for a new aircraft carrier, CVN-76, its long-term fate depends on its commercial viability.
``If the company can't remain competitive, it's not in anyone's interest,'' said James R. McCaul, president of IMA Associates Inc., a Washington-based shipbuilding consulting firm.
Because the shipyard is the largest employer not only in Hampton Roads, but the entire state, its fate is closely tied to the region's economy. Its 12,500 hourly workers and 7,500 salaried employees account for 3.2 percent of Hampton Roads' nonagricultural employment.
They are among the region's highest-paid workers, and their spending supports malls, grocery stores, car dealers and hundreds of other commercial ventures.
The base wage for the average blue-collar yard worker is about $13 per hour, but overtime and benefits substantially increase that figure, Crudup said.
The shipyard may have the upper hand going into negotiations, but Crudup has faith in the strength of his union.
Because Virginia is a right-to-work state, not all laborers at the yard are union members. Indeed, membership in recent years has hovered just above the danger level of 50 percent, below which the shipyard could move to decertify the union under federal labor laws. But a recent membership drive spearheaded by Crudup has increased the union's strength, he said.
``We're simply saying we want better wages and better benefits, and to get that we have to have strong membership,'' Crudup said.
For now, though, both the union and the yard are playing their hands close to their vests.
The shipyard declined to comment on the talks, except to say through spokesman Michael Hatfield, ``we certainly hope we can structure an agreement that will be acceptable to both parties.''
Crudup wouldn't disclose the size of the union or its precise goals.
All he said about the initial half-day meeting Nov. 14 at the Radisson Hotel in Hampton was that it was ``rough, but I've been there before.''
Crudup, a burly 39-year-old, has been through quite a few rough spots in the past but seems to land on his feet, better off than he was before.
He was a junior defensive back for the Menchville High School football team when his girlfriend became pregnant. While he didn't drop out of school, he did get a job. He entered the apprentice program at Newport News Shipbuilding.
Offered a full-time job as a sandblaster after he graduated in 1974, he passed on a longtime desire to join the Marines to stay in Newport News with his girlfriend and near his son, Tom. After a few years he transferred to the riggers department, which makes the stages and structures on which workers stand when working on a ship.
About that time the United Steelworkers began its campaign to unseat the Peninsula Shipbuilders Association as the union representing the yard's workers. The USW's call for better wages and benefits as well as more dignity and a greater voice for workers in the shipyard found a sympathetic ear in Crudup.
``I saw there was a need for people to be involved in the workplace,'' Crudup said. ``I was always asking questions about things that were going on.''
Crudup became a union organizer, attending every meeting and lobbying hundreds of his fellow workers to sign the cards calling for a union vote. The drive was successful, and in January 1978 yard workers voted to replace their old union with the Steelworkers.
The National Labor Relations Board certified the vote in October 1978, but the shipyard wouldn't accept the Steelworkers as the workers' bargaining agent.
The Steelworkers walked out in January 1979 in what became a bloody three-month strike. Bitterness over the strike still runs deep.
``The governor took it upon himself to ask the troopers to come in along with the Newport News police, and a lot of people were hurt,'' Crudup said.
During the strike, Crudup served in the trenches, doing what he could to keep morale high among the striking workers.
In the end the shipyard agreed to recognize the Steelworkers. A year later union members approved a contract giving them a 25 percent raise over 42 months and increasing their medical and pension benefits.
Relations between the union and the shipyard settled into a groove throughout the '80s when Navy shipbuilding work was plentiful thanks to President Reagan's drive toward a 600-ship fleet.
Every three to four years the yard and the union negotiated a new contract. Each of the next three contracts provided raises and bonuses. In the last two, workers agreed to pay more for their health care benefits, reflecting rising health care costs nationwide.
Elected union representative of the riggers department, Crudup worked throughout the yard, mediating disputes and investigating workers' problems and complaints. It was a job he loved.
``I get the biggest sense of satisfaction from helping someone,'' he said. ``The best feeling I've ever had is getting someone their job back.''
In the late '80s, he worked as the union's grievance chairperson, overseeing the 34 union representatives in the yard. He lost that job by three votes in 1990 and went back to being the riggers' union rep.
Then he decided to run for president of the local, whose membership had neared 50 percent.
``I knew the structure of our local, and I felt it wasn't moving in the direction for which we struggled so hard,'' Crudup said.
Campaigning on a promise to increase the membership by educating nonmembers about union benefits, he won an election squeaker by 26 votes last April.
It was a difficult period for Crudup. Two months earlier his wife of seven years, Angela, also a shipyard worker, had been hospitalized with respiratory failure. She almost died.
``It was pretty scary,'' he said. ``I dealt with that and had to deal with the election process at the same time.''
She stayed in the hospital for a month and is still out on disability. The experience taught him to appreciate things he'd taken for granted, he said. It also made him more religious. He tries to attend church every week instead of two or three times a year.
From his office in the two-story brick union headquarters about a block from the shipyard's main office, Crudup led a union membership drive through the summer that continues even now with organizers canvassing workers at the yard's gates.
His goal is to boost membership to 75 percent, a level that would make the union very strong. While it hasn't gotten there yet, he says he has gotten it away from the 50 percent mark.
One difficulty in boosting membership is Virginia's right-to-work labor laws. Nonmember blue-collar employees of the yard benefit from the union's bargaining. Laborers have little obvious incentive to pay union dues.
``I think the bottom line with some people is, if I can get something for free, then why should I pay for it until I have to,'' Crudup said.
Another difficulty the union faces is racial. About 70 percent of the local's members are African-American, as are most of its officers. A majority of the yard's laborers are black, but they total less than 70 percent.
``I have asked myself, I have talked to others, whites, if there was something we could do to get more whites involved,'' Crudup said. ``We know that quite a few whites don't want to be a part of the union.''
Crudup faces bigger problems. The yard said in April that it planned to reduce the work force to between 14,000 and 15,000 by late 1996. The blue-collar work force could fall below 10,000.
To keep the yard busy, the union has worked with the yard's lobbyists in Washington on securing the new aircraft carrier contract. The union and the shipyard have interests that certainly agree, said yard spokesman Hatfield.
The carrier won't save the yard; it just delays the day of reckoning.
Crudup agrees with the yard's strategy of getting back into commercial shipbuilding. ``A lot of our members remember the day when work was plentiful because we had commercial work,'' he said.
But work is falling off. The backlog is weakening. The shipyard will deliver two submarines and an aircraft carrier in 1995; two more subs, its last, in 1996; and another aircraft carrier in 1998. The newly approved carrier would be delivered after the turn of the century.
It recently won a new contract to build two double-hull petroleum-product tankers for a Greek shipping company with an option for two more. It was the first foreign order for a commercial ship built in a U.S. yard since 1957. Those ships are due for delivery in late 1996.
The shipyard has said that it's been in touch with up to 25 other potential buyers of the tanker design and that it could get another order before the end of the year.
``I definitely don't think we should take any concessions,'' Crudup said. ``There's work in the boatyard. I can't speak about the backlog, but there's work in there now and with these new double-hull tankers, there's more work on the way.''
The shipyard will likely put concessions on the table. It may seek reductions in benefits such as overtime rates, night-shift premiums and time off in exchange for cost-of-living wage increases. The yard's 7,500 salaried employees had to take such cuts earlier this year.
Or it could seek an innovative contract like Bath Iron Works Inc. in Maine negotiated with its union. The contract guarantees jobs and gives workers a voice in management decisions in exchange for more flexible work rules the yard says will make it more productive.
``The extent to which a company has the flexibility to best use its work force determines its competitiveness,'' said McCaul, the shipyard consultant. ``If I were in Newport News's position, I would be trying to get the maximum flexibility to use the work force. . . . I would be more concerned about the work practices than compensation issues.''
Newport News Shipbuilding already has cut some costs by improving productivity and finding efficiencies. ``The shipyard has made many profitability gains in recent years,'' Crudup said. ``It's time for the workers to share in those gains.''
But those gains haven't gone to bottom line. The yard contributed less profit to its parent company, Houston-based Tenneco Inc., in 1993 than it did in 1992. This year the yard's profits were down in the first quarter, flat in the last two.
Crudup has some other ideas for the union - a nursery/day-care center for members, and greater community involvement - that he plans to tackle after the contract issue is settled.
If the talks go well, the union should have a new contract by Feb. 5. But until then the contract talks will consume him with endless meetings with members and the company.
``I've been doing this since I came out of high school,'' Crudup said. ``I'm an individual who's a fighter, who challenges. When I see some wrong is being done, I want to do something.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Jim Walker
Thomas Crudup, president of the union that represents thousands of
blue-collar workers at Newport News Shipbuilding, faces some tough
battles as he enters negotiations for a new contract.
Above: Crudup talks with shipyard worker Wallace Holley. The union
helped Holley gets his job back after he was laid off.
Staff graphic
Shipbuilders
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
U.S. Shipyard wages are third-lowest on average among 10 major
shipbuilding nations.
Nation 1992 hourly pay Increase since 1988
For copy of text of this graphic, see microfilm.
by CNB